Book – The Berenstain Bears Forget Their Manners

We’re really big on reading around here and I thought it would be fun to share informal reviews about some of our favorite books.

My daughter is an absolute angel and for the most part I won’t share otherwise to the world wide web. However, she is not perfect and recently we’ve been having some politeness issues to deal with. This book deals with this topic in a gentle and humorous way, without condemnation. I don’t like preachy kids books.

I haven’t asked Jaylene about her favorite page yet, but my guess is from the amount of giggles it gets, that it’s the one where Papa Bear has to do a lot of extra chores for neglecting to follow Mama Bear’s “Family Politeness Plan”. My favorite line from the book is from earlier on in the book:

“She tried going to Papa for help (though it sometimes seemed to Mama that he was part of the problem).”

I’ve actually quoted that line once or twice around the house and it has diffused some “tricky” situations with laughter (from Ahji!).

One of the crafty projects planned for this weekend is “The K’s Family Politeness Plan”. We’ve all been thinking of rude behavior we want stopped and we’re going to develop a chart of some sort. I don’t really like the idea of using housework (like Mama Bear does) to punish rudeness. We try to show cleaning in a positive light so that it’s not seen as drudgery, but rather as a way to improve our life. (It’s really hard for me to see it that way, so I’m trying to make it easier for Jaylene). Our plan is going to involve heart shaped magnets… stay posted!

2 comments

A lot of the children’s books on the market are very good learning tools. They’re disguised as humourous reading but we know better.
Reading is very important for a child. I use to take my daughter to the library weekly since she was about 2 years old. I taught her to read the summer between kindergarden and grade one. She is an avid reader to this day. We can impress so many good skills upon our children. Keep up the good work, Julie.